


Mind of the Machine

by WaywardWinds



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Another addition to the reylo trash collection, Character Development, Eventually plot-driven lovins, F/M, Post TFA, Reflection, not quite redemption
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-21
Updated: 2016-01-22
Packaged: 2018-05-15 00:29:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5764780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WaywardWinds/pseuds/WaywardWinds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Restoration, reconciliation, a story about healing and coming to terms with one's self, a two person journey to that end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so very excited about writing this piece about both these characters brimming with creative potential. At this point I have chapter two's draft written, but I intend to space them out about one week apart each. Feel free to critique all your heart desires, I am only a fledgling writer and occasionally need a written smack in the right direction. Shout out to all the great writers in this fandom, you guys have inspired me.

The air in Ahch-To is saturated, nothing like the arid climate of her former homeland that threatened to drain every molecule of precious moisture with each second of exposure for anyone delirious enough to call the desolate wasteland home. But here, the atmosphere is drastically different, almost benevolent, drawing up recollections of the rare days she’d managed to trade enough for a fleeting spray of cool water for her perpetually baking body. The only similarity she could draw was the ever-present slick of sweat, only here it collected from the outside air, rather than the protective shell of clothing worn just for that purpose.

But she begins the long assent up the isle, a sudden breeze cut through the building coat of perspiration, cool and mild, sweeping away in one moment the reminder of home.

She shoulders the strap of her staff, having elected to carry it rather than the Jedi weapon so leaden with meaning, a legacy she wasn’t sure if she had the right to carry. It took a moment of desperation to wield it in self-defense, and she sure as the Force had no intention of declaring herself a Jedi just because she pulled off a few mind-tricks and survived a monster of a man delirious from having taken both blaster fire and a vicious scorch to the arm.

Alright, maybe she did better than most, but in the wake of Luke Skywalker’s return to the galaxy the light saber simply wasn’t hers to keep, regardless if he took her on as his apprentice. She recalls a monster’s words, impressing upon her mind, “You need a teacher!” and he’d been right, that was easy to admit, true as it is, but she’d sooner expose herself to the ripper-raptors than she would call the man who’d murdered Han Solo master.

Ahead of her the trek up the outcropping is long, she can’t even see the temple they’d spotted flying overhead, but the stone slab steps are shallow and forgiving compared to the endless scramble up slipping dunes and vertical climbs up ships the size of mountains and it leaves her mind to observe the fantastic greenery and surrounding sea-scape, seemingly wrought from her imagination. Rey suspected she’d never get used to these planets so _littered_ in life, for all their beauty and really, why would she ever want to?

Her soft boots make a gentle sound as she moves along, engrossed in the vastness of the view. The ocean pans out endlessly around the island, dotted by a few similar isles, a seemingly universal shade of clear-yet-azure and it’s suddenly hilarious how her previous life revolved around the stuff, where here there was no escaping it. Even as her ascent led her through an obscuring overhang, the foliage and land-scape gradually blocking out the visual the scent of salt water still permeated the air, notably sharper than the crisp fresh-water lake on Takodana.

Rey reaches out to the wall of overhang, grazing the tips of her fingers over the delicate lichen as she walks, imagining the countless Jedi that must have trod this very same path over the course of a millennia and she considers for a moment that perhaps she has a place among them after all.

The overhang continues for quite some distance, throwing her path in such darkness it had her squinting at the sudden exposure to the sun, hand flying up to shield her eyes from the light of Ahch-To’s binary stars, relatively dim compared to the scouring sun on Jakku, but none-the-less bright without the protective eyewear you never went without in the desert.

Only when her vision adjusts does the full impact of where she is, what she’s doing here finally hits her. The path has taken her finally to the First Jedi Temple, antiquated by time and half assimilated by flora but no less magnificent. She’s reminded of her greatest find, a ship that totaled 72 portions but even that pales to the dogma of this place, enriched by the struggles of countless lives that lived here, trained here, found sanctuary here, and she’s suddenly struck by a sensation of _awareness_ , the Force, flooding her perception and despite her greenness, Rey knows it’s an accumulation of this solemn place, a memory of the presence of so many that were once here. Unbidden, she walks along the halls, struck by a scavengers instinct to _search_ , see what she could find here, treasures untouched for her to unearth but she masters herself. No more is Rey a desert scavenger desperate for scrap to survive another day. She didn’t escape Starkiller base and the imperial fleet by the skin of her neck just to go back crawling to the abandoned reaches of some site because it’s _comfortable_.

A memory jeers in her head that she chooses not to engage. Though the sound makes her uneasy all the same. “ _Sand Rat_.”

Small signs of settlement litter the temple. A still-green walking stick leaning against the stone brick, a worn dura-steel canteen, capped, half-filled with water, spare parts to a holocron, twenty some-odd years old but not completely obsolete. Luke Skywalker isn’t found anywhere among them, but the same wordless whisper that told her as a child where to step in the crumbling wreckage of a mostly-salvaged ship before she learned to use her staff, the same voice that told her how to fight against Kylo Ren, where to strike, tells her now that she will not find her master here, and Rey realizes that the voice accumulates here at the temple. She keeps moving.

She knows it isn’t far now. Rey feels the invisible thread pulling her along begins to run out, and she sees there simply isn’t anywhere higher to go. Looking back, the temple is below her and the ocean rimmed horizon stretches out endlessly in the view. The twin suns have begun to set, throwing an uncanny light over the whole of the planet, a shimmering orange not unlike the sands of her former home. A few more steps and then she feels it, a magnitude of presence saturating the air unmatched by any she’d felt before, though her data points are few.

_A silky voice, unwelcomed presence in her head, violently ripping through memory after memory and suddenly being aware of another power, her own, forcing through his own surprise and knowing his fear, a decrepit helmet, half-melted around a skull still contained._

Even larger than _that_ and Rey found herself shaking as she crested the final flight of stairs and the miasma only mounts and there he is, a figure of the legends she’d heard as a child around the washing tables, the leader desperately needed to inspire peace in the galaxy, a brother wanted home by a woman Rey was beginning, hoping to connect with, already someone in her life she could call motherly. Luke Skywalker is here, and as she stands unflappable she finds the twisting in her chest not to be the product of apprehension, but of conviction.

She hesitates to speak, tight-lipped with an iron grip on her staff that would crush a lesser contraption. Ceaseless slews of questions run through her mind, none of them even resembling a greeting so she does the only other thing she can think to do, reaching into her satchel to grip the cool, detailed metal of the saber she was due to return.

Luke Skywalker senses her then, or perhaps he’s always sensed her here and he turns his head, eyes brimming with inexplicable sorrow that catches her off guard, saber faltering in her outstretched hand. There’s a name on his lips that leaves her head reeling, now burning with a question that takes immediate priority and she spits it, confusion settling into her chest like a weight.

“How do you know my name?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maybe I lied. Updates at LEAST once a week. Sometimes more.

Through a haze of pain Kylo Ren is forced to watch the victor, the girl, a scavenger, whole and fleeing with a backdrop of apocalyptic fire wrenching up by the decaying planet and he wonders fleetingly if she’d meant to leave him to a fiery death. She’d looked down on the freshly rendered wound across his face with such a bewildered expression he didn’t need to read her thoughts to know the internal conflict firing across her mind. It only infuriated him further. As if it made any difference how he died here, regardless if his demise was by her hand his death here would be on her head.

Between the agony of his body and the blood loss he flickered out of consciousness. In one lucid moment he found himself being dragged along freezing snow, ears assaulted by the cacophony of a dying planet, vision obscured by the stick of his own dried blood. In another, he was being evacuated onto a ship by Force-knows-who, he couldn’t care if he tried. Only finally when he was deposited onto a medical gurney did slumber have the mercy of shutting down completely, blacking out to the familiar rumble of a departing craft.

Waking up isn’t quite the agony he expected, between the shreds of his body and the impending punishment that was sure to come. The First Order then, had gotten to him first. He kept rigidly still, awaiting the reprimand he deserved. One, simple order, a job that should have been the easiest thing in the galaxy, capture an untrained scavenger girl from a back-water wasteland of a planet. He’d been commanded to do so, and an order from the Supreme Leader wasn’t something to be left undone without dire consequence. Regardless of his lofty position, Kylo knew he couldn’t depend on his status to avoid punishment. Snoke did not discriminate.

  His waiting is interrupted as a loudspeaker picks up.

_Preparing arrival to docking bay sector 32-D, all personnel prepare for landing. Repeat. All personnel prepare for landing._

First Order, then. He affirms, and sits up, ignoring the pain. His unorthodox lightsaber flies into his outstretched hand and the other rises to examine the new scar bisecting his face, an unwelcome mar left by the girl and for a moment he considers rending the flesh again to have the scar reconstructed, his fingers claws as the edge along the healed, puckered surface.

The only other thing remotely sentient in the make-shift recovery room is a medi-droid in the corner, undoubtedly the thing that treated him. The gouges he received would still be painful for some time, but if anything, he wished they hurt more. The focus it provides too valuable to squander, and he rolls his shoulder just to feel the juncture of his bicep burn.

Hux is outwardly smug as he trounces into the room, tone ridiculously condescending and as he relays his message Kylo Ren itches to bury his saber into the General’s smirking face.

“The Supreme Commander wishes to see you in Korriband. He expects you’ll depart immediately.” He mocks, obviously leaving something critical unsaid.

Kylo battles his ire to push gently, undetected on the general’s mind but Hux, either lucky or annoyingly intelligent, leaves before he can fill in the blank of what was unsaid, apparently not requiring a response.

Because he didn’t, there’s no declining a summons from his master but the oddity of the delivery leaves him uneasy, but he buries it down deep and forces himself up from the bed-side, ignoring the sudden shudder from the craft as it came to rest on what must be a destroyer. His helmet was lost, swallowed up by the galaxy’s first inverted star where he’d doffed it killing Han Solo, thus he was forced to stalk through the destroyer unmasked, exposed, another thing he could blame on his fool of a father. He almost runs the flight controller through at the barest hint of disbelief she shows as he barks out orders for “any damn ship with a hyper drive” and he’s angrier than ever, volatile, a chemical fire fueled by this rooted feeling of uselessness and he seeing red, gripping the handle of his saber so tightly his arm protested, jaw wound tight and turned to the overlook, watching the scramble of technicians.

Jorgan Adala sat stock-still while her fingers moved desperately to input a shuttle release order. Her vision dotting around the unseen grip around her neck, just loose enough to allow shallow, fleeting breaths, and when her monitor announces that the ship has been primed she wheezes it out, collapsing immediately at the sudden influx of oxygen after the grip vanishes. The rest of the crew says nothing as Kylo Ren storms out.

He forces his vexation down to a simmer, mastering himself with the focused stab of pain at his side and the perpetual pool of anger always just beneath the surface of his skin. The only proven method of meditation had ever been able to achieve, long before he stood at the supreme leader’s side. Eventually the void settles in numbly, not quite a calm but certainly more tame than his usual state of rage. He practically glides down the stairwell, now moving with a single minded purpose toward his craft. The fleeing crew of technicians escape his notice.

The craft is serviceable, a decidedly heavily modified blockade runner, judging by the triangular hub cap and the obvious lack of mounted cannons and other strange bits not conventionally belonging on this model. Ultimately, as long as it can maneuver without plunging nose-first directly up the ass of an asteroid, it’s acceptable.

Fuel lines prepped and ship untethered, pre-flight preparations are done, and without second thought he flicks on manual controls and grabs the yoke, ignition roaring to life with a simple thought. The entire craft shudders to life, the familiar whirr of activating systems filling his hearing as he threads a small head-set over his ears. He reaches, grabs the lift, slides it up and the ship’s airborne. Force, he’d almost forgotten how it feels to fly, exhilarating and liberating all at once but- _no_ , immediately he shoves the feeling down, sickened by the similarity to Han Solo. Typical, no less.

With decidedly less joy he flicks on the last series of controls, and the craft makes its measured way out the hangar, through the blast doors and the thin atmosphere kept in place by the ship’s natural gravity. The hyper-drive takes its sweet time to warm up- and as Kylo moves to slam his fist on the panel the tell-tale blip sounds and the runner is gone.

He always feels powerful travelling through hyper-space, flipping off gravity and the constraints of time-space to pierce through the vast distance like a needle. Eventually it’s necessary to coax the craft back to the third dimension to make the rest of the approach; two cycles to navigate the asteroid belt that envelops Korriban like a shield, atomizing ships idiotic enough to brazenly blast through. He’d seen it happen often enough.

He throws the shuttle into autopilot, deeming the sensors sufficient enough to dodge the deep-space minefield on their own, supervised of course. Not like there was anything else to do in the cramped runner. He slides deeper into the pilot’s seat, the closest he gets to relaxed even as his fists ball against the armrest.

For the first time in what seems like ages he allows his mind to wander. Breath evens, eyes shut tight and he gradually feels the void settle deeply, and for a few fleeting seconds he knows oblivion.

An exhale.

Defiant and strong, her face flashes unbidden through his recollection.

The peace is shattered, almost on queue he flooded with the desire to _rage_. Luckily the claustrophobic helm is deterrent enough, he preferred an intact hull to a grisly death suffocating in space. So he forces himself to swallow most of his anger, trying his kriffing best to force away the face that now defines the very meaning of the word frustration out, out of his head, the scavenger rat with the audacity to deny _him_

The unstable beam of his saber ignites “ARGHHH!-“ and before he thinks better the upper portion of the chair has been sliced off, now burning at the seam and it’s a miracle he missed anything crucial. His back heaves, hunched over at the waist and he’s seething, raging at the notion now that the girl could affect him so without even being _here_. Knuckles pop in their cruel grip and he pictures her, so tall above him as she stands victorious while he bleeds out in the snow.

Spittle drips to the floor and he extinguishes the blade, still burning from the sudden outburst, never sated. His arm throbs in long-forgotten protest.

It’s going to be a long trip.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as always!


End file.
